Sol Campbell

by Simon Astaire

  Names were mentioned but the perpetrator never stepped forward. Ashley Cole best sums it up: ‘The culprit wasn’t English or French, so that should narrow it down.’ For a couple of days, the incident submerged the extraordinary 49-game unbeaten run from 2003 to 2004 that had just ended for Arsenal. It was a record to be proud of.

  Played

  Won

  Drawn

  Lost

  For

  Against

  Points

  Home

  25

  20

  5

  0

  63

  21

  65

  Away

  24

  16

  8

  0

  49

  14

  56

  OverAll

  49

  36

  13

  0

  112

  35

  121

  ‘For me, there was a sense of relief that the record was over,’ says Sol. ‘It started to become incredibly intense, following us everywhere. I was very disappointed we’d lost, and in the manner by which the end came, but I felt as if an albatross had been removed. My overriding feeling was of pride to be part of history and a group of players that became a family.’

  Wenger said of his team, ‘I felt very privileged to work with these players, not only because they were strong but also because they were respectable. They were dedicated players who came from all over the world and created a unique bit of history in football. It was truly amazing.’

  • • •

  Sol was pissed off. He’d been left out of the team.

  As the 2004-05 season progressed, Wenger had begun to pick Kolo Touré and Pascal Cygan, then Philippe Senderos, as his regular central defensive pair, meaning Sol was no longer first choice. Only a year before, he was the number one pick in defence for one of the best teams ever in the Premier League. That defence had let in twenty-six goals all season. Now he was being dropped and was on the bench. ‘Things in football can change very quickly,’ says Sol. It was time to talk to Wenger about it. Not to tell him he was leaving but to have his say and understand where he stood, what was happening. Come on, look at my quality. I just need you to back me up and help me to get over the bumps in my form. He was thinking exactly this as he walked to the manager’s office. He didn’t often want, or even need, to see Wenger face-to-face. But this time was different. On entering the office, he noticed immediately how tidy it was. Nothing out of place, papers neatly piled, pens in a straight line and the phone positioned close enough to grab for an important call. There was little hanging on the walls apart from a few football photos; they were devoid of personality. This place had a sense of peace. So peaceful, in fact, that he almost felt he needed to whisper. But instead, he put forward his case in a forthright way he’d rehearsed earlier. Even then, Wenger remained unmoved.

  ‘These two are playing well,’ Wenger said. ‘And I don’t want to change it.’

  ‘But Senderos isn’t playing well,’ replied Sol. ‘He’s a lucky player. I’ve been watching him. He keeps making mistakes. His real luck is that none of his mistakes have been taken advantage of. But it won’t last…There’s nothing personal here, I like these players, but I don’t think they’re up to the job.’

  Wenger shook his head in disagreement. Sol took a deeper look at his manager. He asked Wenger to repeat what he thought he had just heard.

  ‘They are our future,’ Wenger said.

  Sol couldn’t see it. He wanted to argue but he knew it would be a waste of time. He was speechless. The meeting finished calmly. Wenger stood and shook his hand firmly. He made it clear to Sol that he wasn’t just part of the club but a very important part.

  • • •

  Arsenal had a successful run in the FA Cup, progressing all the way thanks to a reasonably favourable draw to the final to play Manchester United later that year in May 2005.

  The manager didn’t immediately tell Sol that he would not be playing but he didn’t need to. ‘I probably knew three or four days before. You always know because you are playing on the other team, the reserve side, in training.’ Senderos had remained the preferred choice. There was little chance Sol would make the first team unless someone got injured.

  He asked Wenger a second time what was happening. On this occasion it was following a team meeting, and after everyone had left the room. ‘The boss basically said he was happy with the way the team was playing. I left it at that. I had to look at the bigger picture.’

  For a defender, just as it is with a goalkeeper, it is more difficult to get back in the first team. A striker can go out and score a last-minute winner and change everything in a second. It doesn’t work the same for someone in defence, and Sol was well aware of the fact. But he was patient, held counsel on how much this was hurting, and sat on the bench. ‘Life is shit on the bench,’ he says, looking back now. ‘It feels unnatural, just sitting there watching. Perhaps it’s the same for anyone, but for me it was torture.’ He watched the entire cup final from the subs’ bench, rigid, every second a beating pulse urging him to get on the field. It was as if someone had struck him on the back of the head. This was an emotional strike, which added to a pain that was already growing. ‘I remember he was very disappointed to be left out,’ Wenger said. ‘He took the FA Cup very seriously. He understood its history and importance. I noticed if we were knocked out of the competition, he more than anyone took it the hardest.’

  When Patrick Vieira scored the winning penalty in the shootout, Sol ran onto the pitch to celebrate with his team-mates. There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation in supporting his team’s success. He was happy for them and ultimately for himself; he’d picked up his second FA Cup winner’s medal with Arsenal.

  Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein and Arsene Wenger announce the signing of the Tottenham captain in front of a stunned press at Highbury in July 2001. Sol: ‘I just hope everyone respects my decision.’

  Arsene Wenger and Sol shake hands on the deal to bring the Spurs captain to Highbury.

  ‘It was a special moment for me.’ Sol makes his debut for Arsenal, coming on as a substitute during their pre-season friendly in Austria against AS Roma in the summer of 2001.

  Lost Weekend

  ‘He had his boots off and I said come on Sol, put those on and let’s get on with the game… he shook his head and said, “I can’t.” I knew then, something was very wrong.’

  Thierry Henry

  The man opposite woke up coughing and muttering something to himself. Sol was looking out of the window as the train pulled past the backwaters of England. He noticed the parks, the empty football pitches. It reminded him of his childhood back home. He indulged in the memories of those days, of that time. He stretched his legs in a deeper search for a solution. What’s been going wrong? Why am I here now, escaping from everything I have worked for? But, as the Eurostar train hurried away out of the UK towards his refuge in Brussels, Sol began to take comfort in the fact that he was escaping from a life that had become his entrapment, his prison, and just maybe he could for a short time gain some solace from the ordinary things seen on an ordinary peaceful day, without the pressure that had constantly grown over the last few years.

  Less than twenty-four hours earlier, on 1 February 2006, he was driving his Range Rover into Highbury to play for Arsenal against West Ham. He hadn’t being playing well of late. He knew it. He was a perfectionist and it was causing concern. He was losing his command of the game.

  When the half-time whistle was blown, Arsenal were losing 2-1 and Sol had had a pitiful time. First he mis-kicked the ball to allow Nigel Reo Cocker through to give West Ham the lead, followed by Bobby Zamora easily barging him out of the way to score a second. Looking back at the footage now, you see the pain veiled over his face. ‘In truth, I’d played worse over previous weeks. I had an injury and wasn’t able to physically pull myself out of the slump. It’s always difficul
t when you’re not fit enough to lift your game,’ he says. As he walked off the pitch at the break, he heard someone shout abuse and make a gesture. A hand fashioned itself into the shape of a gun, which was pointed in Sol’s direction. As his index finger pulled the trigger, the fan’s lips made a little explosion, and his mouth stretched itself into a bayonet smile. He did not flinch. He continued to stare. And to sneer. Sol took no notice, at least tried to take no notice but he was beyond the point of caring anyway. He opened the door of the dressing room and as he stepped inside, he knew what he had to do. What was happening now was stripping away the armour he’d built up ever since he was a young man. He felt naked, vulnerable; ‘Everything that was happening was hurting, bothering me.’

  The accumulation of storms in his life had finally combined and on that evening hit him so hard and unexpectedly that he had only one choice left. Escape. This was not going to be a quiet retreat into his house, not answering calls. No. As a public figure, one of the sacrifices you abandon for the rewards, and the fame that goes with it, is privacy. A million people will be told of your story, laughing, hissing, forming their own opinion of what is wrong. But you’re the only one who knows.

  The players were busy working out what had gone wrong in the first half. The atmosphere was not particularly amplified because of the scoreline; there was more a sense of disbelief, a low. How are we losing? Sol made his way to a side room, the physio’s room. He talks as if it was not just a different time, but also a different dimension. It’s as if he hasn’t really gone back there much. That he is digging up a tomb he had hoped would be left alone. But memories such as these cannot be avoided forever, however much you’d like them to be. His father had died. It had been almost two and a half years. Sol had never found peace with his father. ‘We always had a very tough relationship,’ Sol lamented. His father had a stroke, in front of his mother Wilhelmina, while she was making herself a cup of tea and asking him if he wanted one. He fell to the ground and she rushed to his side to witness his last moments. Hours later he was unconscious in hospital, his family by his side. Some lives end in the most ordinary manner. Sewell’s last days were stripped of the pride he carried throughout his life. Sol had an unfulfilled relationship with him. How he still desired his recognition and how, even today, Sol still finds it hard to admit that is what he most wanted, what he most needed. However successful Sol had become, a sublime talent among millions of dreamers, earning more money in a month, in a week, than his father did in years, he never got a moment when his father acknowledged his success. Never. And the irony of Sol’s life is that despite all the fortunes bestowed upon him, what he wanted most was something he would never receive. ‘I think, on reflection, my father could have looked after us a little bit more.’ There is a long silence and, for an instant, his face freezes like marble. He gives a weary smile and quietly says, ‘I wanted to tell him how I felt. I wanted and needed it to be different to the way he had been with me. For my life to be emotionally different to his.’

  As his father lay motionless in the hospital bed, Sol stretched out his hand and touched his father’s skin. It would be the first time he had ever touched him. He grabbed his hand and squeezed it but he did not respond and never would. The last touch of Sewell’s hand was cold and unfeeling. Sol told him, ‘I love you. I want you to hear and know that. I refuse to be like you!’ His father would pass away two days later, the night before Sol’s 29th birthday.

  When he buried him, Sol cried for the first time in his memory. He began to mourn his loss profoundly. He didn’t talk to anyone about his pain; he masked his grief. But as he wept, he thought of the man who arrived from Jamaica with a strict God fearing upbringing and made a life for himself, his wife and children in England. A man who worked nights, drank beer and smoked rolled-up Old Holborns, which had probably brought him to his early death. The overflowing grey ashtray of cigarette butts by his bed in his room; the ash scattered on the floor. The man who, when friends rang and asked for Sulzeer, would say he wasn’t in even though he would be sitting nearby. The force of his belt when Sol had done something wrong. The times he puffed out his chest and said, ‘This is my house! You do what I say when you’re here!’ When his father ignored him, even though they were together in the same room. Those silent moments when Sol noticed his father deep in thought. What was he really thinking? He thought of the missed opportunities to talk to his father, and the missed opportunity for his father to take comfort and pride in his success. Sewell had never held, kissed or hugged his son. His avoidance of any sign of affection was overbearing. It took a mixture of courage and pain for Sol to reach out. And it wasn’t until that night by his hospital bed that he recognised how wounded his father was. He found the thought utterly and totally unbearable.

  • • •

  Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Freddie Ljungberg were in the physio’s room. ‘Yes, Dennis was definitely there and I think Thierry came in. Maybe there was someone else? Maybe another player walked in and walked out again,’ Sol says vaguely. ‘It felt like a forest fire; everything in my life had burnt to a cinder and I felt there was nothing left.’

  He felt he was letting his side down. He knew something had come to an end.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ Sol spoke gently.

  Gary Lewin, the Arsenal physio said, ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t go on.’

  Sol remembers Arsene Wenger was in there. The manager heard what Sol had said to Lewin. As Sol recalls the moment, he talks rather unconvincingly, unsure of himself and, for an instant, he changes from a confident man into a young boy grabbing the table with both hands for support. He was clearly in torment remembering those hours a few years on. This would be the first time in his life that he had admitted defeat.

  ‘He had his boots off and I said come on Sol, put those on and let’s get on with the game,’ recalls Thierry Henry. ‘I remember he shook his head and said ‘“I can’t.” I knew then something was very wrong. “Can’t” isn’t something Sol Campbell says.’

  Sol had always been number one in everything he did with football. Never second, never number two. A philosopher once published an article arguing that the first natural number is two: never with Sol, it had always been number one. Arsene Wenger tried to persuade him to return for the second half, telling him that he still believed in him. Sol remained motionless. The manager repeated and reinforced what he had said but this time his voice was unconvincing, like that of someone making an offer he knows won’t be taken up. ‘You’ll be okay.’ Sol shook his head. Wenger knew then. He called for Sebastian Larsson, an academy graduate, to get ready. A little surprised, Larsson started to limber up in preparation for the second half. It would not turn out to be Larsson’s finest hour; he was booked and his mistake would lead to a third goal in West Ham’s 3-2 victory. It was Arsenal’s third straight defeat. For a team that had recently been so dominant, the decline signalled the word ‘crisis’ on the back pages of the daily papers.

  Sol stayed in the side room as the rest of the players had their team talk. ‘The boss told us Sol wouldn’t be returning for the second half,’ says Henry. Sol then heard the sound of muffled studs leaving the dressing room. Robert Pires looked in before he went back onto the field. A strange expression. Without so many words, he asked if Sol was okay. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  When the dressing room was empty and peaceful, Sol went in and took off his boots and put on some Nike trainers. He pulled on some trousers and put on his coat. He was still in his Arsenal red shirt as he drove away from Highbury.

  ‘Isn’t that Sol Campbell?’ an old man asks, spitting to the ground.

  ‘He should be playing, shouldn’t he?’ another says.

  ‘Not anymore,’ Sol replies in his head. ‘Maybe never again.’

  The rain had begun to fall hard. Sol didn’t know how much it was raining until he saw the light, coming out of a pub, close to the ground. A man was clearing his small stall; t-shirts, scarves and badges bein
g carefully packed away. People don’t buy after the game when it pours down, and especially when the home team is losing. A man runs to the underground for cover, jumping over the puddles like he’s playing hopscotch. Sol thinks he hears a roar from the crowd but it’s just his imagination; he is too far from the ground to hear anything. He’s not tempted to switch on the car radio; to hear the score, to hear how Arsenal are doing. It’s in the past. There is nothing left for him now.

  It was that sort of indecisive hour in a person’s mind when you have to decide whether to stay for another drink or head back home. But Sol’s mind was clear. He knew what he needed to do. He’d get home, pack and go to see a friend. He needed company, the right sort of company. Someone who could and would listen to him, someone he could talk to. There weren’t many to choose from. But he knew he needed to get away. He had a desire to escape those themes that had niggled and disrupted and dominated and SCREWED UP his life. He needed to be out of London, perhaps even out of the country, before the night turned into morning.

  He parked his Range Rover outside his home. It was quiet. It was always quiet. But the silence as he sat momentarily in the car was probably the most intense silence he had ever experienced; quieter than any library, or the silence in his childhood home when the family was out. He took in a deep breath. He muttered ‘Hurry up’ out loud and the wind burst in as he opened the front door. Keep it going. What now? Who’s next? How will it end? He went straight upstairs to his bedroom. He took a shower. The water was hot; in fact, too hot, as if he was trying to scald himself. He got out and wrapped a white towel round himself. He looked in the mirror, eyes resolute. He rubbed his hands over his cheeks. He packed an overnight bag: three white shirts, t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, socks, trainers, leather shoes and a wash bag. It does not signal that he will be gone for a long time but, as he takes the case downstairs, he has no idea how long he will be gone or what the next few days will bring.